Arve Henriksen’s Ambient Jazz

Re-listening to Towards Language (2017)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Arve Henriksen’s album *Towards Language* (Rune Grammofon) came out just over five years ago. It’s an essential catalog item for the growing library of what has come to be called “ambient jazz” — what used to be, when there was far less of this stuff, simply thought of as “music in the tradition of Miles Davis’ *In a Silent Way*.” The lush-yet-minimalist record teamed the Norwegian trumpeter with his countrymen Jan Bang and Erik Honoré (who have worked with numerous electronically mediated trumpeters, including Jon Hassell and Nils Petter Molvær).

Here is *Towards Language* on YouTube. You should start at the beginning, but if you’re looking for a key track, I recommend “Hibernal.”

And once you’ve gotten it under your skin, check out this live performance, which turns the trio into a quartet with the addition of guitarist Eivind Aarset:

The Keyboard Is a Landscape

A premiere for a dozen pianos

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a photo I took on Wednesday evening, September 14, in Golden Gate Park, not far from where I live in San Francisco’s Richmond District. The occasion was the premiere of Fall and Fly, a new piece of music composed by Benjamin Gribble for a dozen pianos. The funny thing is that after the performance, several people I spoke with said the same thing. They’d assumed in advance, as had I, that the pianos would surround the audience: that we’d walk amid a landscape of keyboards and hear different things depending on our location. Instead, the pianos were grouped together in an arc, forming what felt like, in effect, one single 1,056-key instrument.

I shot this image just before the piece began. For the performance, its composer took a seat at the first piano on the left (the one fully in view above the hat that’s on top of a tripod). Gary Kamiya, Agneta Falk, and Rebecca Solnit spoke at the opening, though the sound system was such that depending on where you sat, you might not have heard much of what they said. From today, the 16th, through the 20th, the same dozen pianos will be placed throughout the Botanical Garden, and anyone can walk up and play a bit. There are also some scheduled events. Details at [sfbg.org/flowerpiano](https://sfbg.org/flowerpiano). It’s a mixed blessing that this weekend there is much-needed rain in the local weather forecast.

Disquiet Junto Project 0559: Yes Exit

The Assignment: Compose your personal entrance and exit cues for conference calls.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 19, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 15, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the [llllllll.co discussion thread.](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0559-yes-exit/)

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0559: Yes Exit
The Assignment: Compose your personal entrance and exit cues for conference calls.

The latest update of your favorite (or least favorite, or simply most used) conference call app has introduced a new degree of personalization. You can now create your own entrance tone and exit tone, so people know when you joined and left a call.

This is a one-step project: record your own entrance tone and exit tone for conference calls.

Note: When posting, combine them into one track with a pause/silence in between.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0559” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0559” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0559-yes-exit/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0559-yes-exit/)

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 19, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 15, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. These will likely be quite brief.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0559” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 559th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Yes Exit (The Assignment: Compose your personal entrance and exit cues for conference calls) — at: https://disquiet.com/0559/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0559-yes-exit/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0559-yes-exit/)

This Week in Sound (U.K.)

Special "The Queen Is Dead" edition

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Additional sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the September 12, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound: [tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet).

▰ “It is not yet clear if Morrisons [a U.K. chain] plans to close its stores but the supermarket chain was the subject of reports that it had turned off the beeps at its checkouts as a mark of respect to the Queen — something it denied. Morrisons said: ‘Our checkout beeps are not off. They have just been turned down, as our music and tannoy announcements have been switched off in stores.’” Side note: Tannoy (with a capital “T”) is a nearly century-old manufacturer of speakers. The word (with a lowercase “t”) apparently is a generic for loudspeakers, like fridge (from Frigidaire) is for refrigerators. ➔ [theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/12/aldi-primark-retailers-closing-queen-funeral-stores-bank-holiday)

▰ Big Ben only came back to life on December 31, 2021, after four years of repairs. It played a special role for the Queen’s funeral. “The procession will reach Westminster Hall on the hour. The timing will be just so. ‘Big Ben beginning to chime as the wheels come to a stop,’ as one broadcaster put it. … At 9am, Big Ben will strike. The bell’s hammer will then be covered with a leather pad seven-sixteenths of an inch thick, and it will ring out in muffled tones.” ➔ [theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge)

▰ A 2017 letter to the Financial Times with details on the quieting of Big Ben: “In the basement clockroom of the House of Commons is a hammer extension, made by Thwaites & Reed, which when attached to the hammer of Big Ben allows the sound volume to be reduced as required. Dent, the original maker, made a leather pad secured with belts which when strapped to the bell hammer softens the tone. A replacement pad was made by Thwaites & Reed and is stored behind the pendulum. Both these devices were ordered and paid for by the Parliamentary Estate, and coupled with the different ways to ring the bell, provide multiple combinations for clock operation and bell sound.” ➔ [ft.com](https://www.ft.com/content/f0b1383a-a37c-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2)

▰ A 1910 London Illustrated News photo of the bell with the pad in place: ➔ [books.google.com](https://books.google.com/books?id=wJtQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA825&lpg=PA825)